Carbon-Based

Trees in far north provide biggest climate benefit

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:20:00 +0000

So often the proposed climate measures are a few step behind the science. From New Scientist: Champions of carbon offsetting may have been barking up the wrong tree. It is generally assumed that the tropics are the best place to plant forests in order to sequester carbon and cool the planet, but a study of the effects of tree planting is casting doubt on this idea. To maximise climate benefits we should be planting trees at higher latitudes, the study suggests.

Alvaro Montenegro at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, and colleagues used high-resolution satellite data to work out where new forests would bring the biggest benefit. They estimated the net climate impact of planting trees on 5-kilometre-square plots of cropland in locations where forests can be expected to thrive.

Their calculations took into account both the cooling effect of the trees soaking up CO2 and the heating effect which would result from the trees reflecting less sunlight than the crops they replaced. To their surprise, Montenegro's team found that on balance, planting forests in northern Russia, central Canada and Europe would cool the climate more effectively than planting them in India, Brazil and most of China (Global and Planetary Change, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2009.08.005).

Govindasamy Bala at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore reckons existing tropical carbon-offsetting schemes may still have the edge, however. Montenegro's study may have overestimated the amount of carbon forests in Siberia and Canada can store, he warns….

Coastal aspen forest at the Vikna archipelago (central Norway), Nord-Trøndelag county, Norway. The picture is taken early in April, just before the growing season really starts. Lichen and mosses thrives in the oceanic climate. Shot by Orcaborealis, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Major Asian cities face climate disaster: WWF

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:45:00 +0000

Agence France-Presse: Low-lying and impoverished Asian coastal cities such as Dhaka, Manila and Jakarta are vulnerable to "brutal" damage from climate change without global action, environmental group WWF warned Thursday. Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions must be curtailed in "mega-cities" where global warming will affect everything from national security to health and water availability, the influential campaign group said.

"Climate change is already shattering cities across developing Asia and will be even more brutal in the future," said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. Including their suburbs, Dhaka, Manila and Jakarta now have a combined population of about 49 million, according to WWF.

It said better-off cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore also faced varying degrees of risk from climate change, such as rising sea levels, excessive rain, flooding and heatwaves. Hong Kong could see dramatically fewer cold days per year while dengue fever appears to be spreading to previously unaffected parts of Singapore, it noted.

"Asia is the most populous and arguably the most vulnerable continent in the world because of the high risk of climate impacts and relatively low adaptive capacity," the report said….

A drowned taxi in a 2007 flood in Jakarta. A great shot by gajah mada, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

Spotlight on satellites for disaster management

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:33:00 +0000

Sian Lewis in SciDev.net: Satellites can save lives from natural disasters but developing countries risk missing the opportunity through poor political support. Successfully applied, new technologies can accelerate a country's development and help transform its people's socioeconomic prospects.

This is never truer than for satellite technology. Telecommunication satellites, for example, are already delivering teaching material to remote communities and advice to farmers on when to plant their crops. Satellites offer developing countries another opportunity to improve living conditions — remote sensing for disaster management.

And that's important. The developing world suffers more than 95 per cent of all deaths caused by natural disasters. Last year alone, two disasters — cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and the Sichuan earthquake in China — killed more than 225,000 people.

Yet, with a few notable exceptions, developing country governments rarely fully appreciate how remote sensing satellites could reduce this death toll. And most don't provide the capacity and resources to make it happen.

Satellites collect accurate, frequent and virtually instantaneous data over the whole world. They often offer the only way of viewing disaster areas. The developed world already harnesses remote sensing to monitor and manage disasters. … Some developing country governments also rely on remote sensing to cope with natural disasters. When a severe earthquake hit Sichuan province in China last year, for example, nearly 1300 satellite images were processed to monitor and evaluate damage, mitigate additional threats, and guide relief workers through affected areas….

An artist's conception of a fully integrated environmental monitoring system including satellites, balloons, ships, aircraft, buoys, and data reception and processing facilities. Circa 1965! What, no jetpack? Image from NOAA

Shockingly high number of US bridges remain sub-standard

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:18:00 +0000

Better Roads has a looong, data-rich study of bridges and roads in the US. Behold the fruits of decades of underinvestment!: The Better Roads Bridge Inventory is an exclusive, award-winning annual survey that has been conducted since 1979. Bridge engineers from every state and Washington, D.C., are set a survey with both qualitative and quantitative questions. The Federal Highway Administration, in consultation with the states, has assigned a sufficiency rating, or SR, to each bridge (20 feet or more) that is inventoried. Formula SR rating factors are as outlined in the current Recording and Coding Guide for Structures Inventory and Appraisal SI&A of the Nation’s Bridges. The qualitative data is gathered through a questionnaire about major issues concerning bridge conditions and maintenance.

There are 597,787 bridges in America, 288,920 interstate and state bridges and 308,867 city/county/township bridges. But 21.6 percent – or 62,504 – of the interstate and state bridges are structurally deficient (SD) or functionally obsolete (FO). And 25.7 percent of the city/county/township bridges – or 79,394 – are SD/FO.

Maintenance, personnel, training, age, environmental restrictions, a need to minimize traffic disruption, capacity and corrosion issues remain major barriers to lowering the rate of bridges becoming deficient, despite some respite coming from stimulus fund money.

…Regardless of what the official statistics show about the number of bridges that are SD and FO, some bridge engineers say that we should look at the square footage of SD and FO bridges to get a true picture of the situation. Ray Mumphrey, highway bridge program manager with the Louisiana Department of Transportation, says that while the number of SD/FO bridges may have decreased, the square footage may actually be increasing. “It may look like we’re making progress [in the nation] with the number of deficient bridges, however larger bridges are becoming deficient which increases the square footage of deficient bridges,” Mumphrey says. “There are a lot of interstate [bridges] becoming deficient, although the numbers of deficient structures may have gone down.”…

Time is running out to slow climate change, report finds

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Steve Kellman in Circle of Blue: A new IEA study reveals the costly consequences of increasing current energy consumption patterns and calls for swifter policy action. The window is closing on the chance to avert the most damaging impacts of climate change, but cost-effective solutions exist to make the needed changes, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns. The findings are part of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook report, an annual publication of the 28-nation intergovernmental organization that was released Tuesday.

“World leaders gathering in Copenhagen next month for the UN Climate summit have a historic opportunity to avert the worst effects of climate change,” said Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA’s executive director. “The World Energy Outlook 2009 seeks to add momentum to their negotiations at this crucial stage by detailing the practical steps needed for a sustainable energy future as part of a global climate deal.”

If current trends in energy use continue, the world’s temperature will rise up to six degrees centigrade, according to the report. The warming would pose serious and costly threats to global energy security. While it’s predicted that the global economic crisis sharply reduced the world’s energy use this year, consumption is expected to resume its upward trend once economies stabilize if government policies don’t change….

Seas may rise even higher

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:38:00 +0000

Kiran Chug in the Dominion Post (New Zealand): Scientists are predicting seas will rise higher than the levels the Environment Ministry advises local councils to plan for. Delegates in Copenhagen for the United Nations climate change conference next month are to be told of the new predictions, which draw on new satellite images of Greenland and Antarctica.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted a sea level rise of up to 59 centimetres by the end of the century. However, the director of the Antarctic Research Centre, Tim Naish, said the international community now believed sea levels could rise by 1.9 metres. Environment Minister Nick Smith said the Government was working on establishing a national environmental standard on planning for sea levels, which he hoped would be in place next year.

He hoped to put the standard out for consultation next year, but said it was likely that councils would still be required to plan for a rise of 59cm. "The Government is not going to consider adjusting its policy every week," Dr Smith said.

…Ministry senior analyst Warren Gray said the current advice to councils was to plan for a sea level rise of 50cm, and consider what a rise of 80cm could mean. He said some were planning for sea level rises of up to 1.5 metres. "We want people to be safe, but not building defences that are not necessary," he said.

The mouth of the Uawa River in New Zealand, shot by Monsieur Blanc, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Cave study links climate change to California droughts

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:58:00 +0000

University of California at Davis: California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montañez. The finding, which comes from analyzing stalagmites from Moaning Cavern in the central Sierra Nevada, was published online Nov. 5 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

The sometimes spectacular mineral formations in caves such as Moaning Cavern and Black Chasm build up over centuries as water drips from the cave roof. Those drops of water pick up trace chemicals in their path through air, soil and rocks, and deposit the chemicals in the stalagmite. "They're like tree rings made out of rock," Montañez said. "These are the only climate records of this type for California for this period when past global warming was occurring."

At the end of the last ice age about 15,000 years ago, climate records from Greenland show a warm period called the Bolling-Allerod period. Oster and Montanez's results show that at the same time, California became much drier. Episodes of relative cooling in the Arctic records, including the Younger Dryas period 13,000 years ago, were accompanied by wetter periods in California.

The researchers don't know exactly what connects Arctic temperatures to precipitation over California. However, climate models developed by others suggest that when Arctic sea ice disappears, the jet stream -- high-altitude winds with a profound influence on climate -- shifts north, moving precipitation away from California.

"If there is a connection to Arctic sea ice then there are big implications for us in California," Montañez said. Arctic sea ice has declined by about 3 percent a year over the past three decades, and some forecasts predict an ice-free Arctic ocean as soon as 2020….

A sliced stalagmite speleothem from California's McLean's Cave in the Sierra Nevada foothills. (Credit: Isabel Montañez / Dept. of Geology, University of California, Davis)

Climate change threatens East Africa's most traded crops

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Justus Lyatuu in the Daily Monitor (Uganda): Maize and beans, East Africa’s most traded and consumed commodities, are being threatened by climate changes. A new study published in the peer-review journal on Agricultural Systems, projects that climate change will have highly variable impacts on East Africa’s vital maize and bean harvests over the next two to four decades.

This is presenting growers and livestock keepers with threats since maize is a raw material used in the production of animal feeds. Previous estimates by the study projected moderate decline in the production of staple foods by 2050 for the region as a whole but also suggested that the overall picture disguises large differences within and between countries.

Mr Philip Thornton, who works for the International Livestock Research Institute and is the lead author of the new study, said: “Even though these types of projections involve much uncertainty, they leave no room for complacency about East Africa’s food security in the coming decades.”

“Countries need to act boldly if they’re to seize opportunities for intensified farming in favoured locations, while cushioning the blow that will fall on rural people in more vulnerable areas.”

…Mr Carlos Seré, ILRI director general said the emerging scenario of climate-change winners and losers is not inevitable. “Despite an expected three-fold increase in food demand by 2050, East Africa can still deliver food security for all through a smart approach that carefully matches policies and technologies to the needs and opportunities of particular farming areas,” Mr Seré said….

A field of millet in Uganda, shot by not not phil, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

South Korea launches 19 billion dollar river project despite protests

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:33:00 +0000

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: South Korea on Tuesday launched a 19 billion dollar project to dredge and restore its four major rivers despite protests over the feared environmental impact. Excavators started shifting soil to build temporary dams on two of the rivers after the environment ministry gave the green light following a four-month survey.

Under the plan the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan rivers will be dredged, given new banks and equipped with dams along a total length of some 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles). Prime Minister Chung Un-Chan told a cabinet meeting the three-year programme will mean less water is wasted, will improve water quality and will boost the economy of local provinces.

When completed in December 2012, the government says the rivers will be opened up for transport and tourism and floods and droughts will be controlled. It also hopes the project will create tens of thousands of jobs as the country emerges from the global economic crisis.

Critics say the river project is a recycled plan to build a massive cross-country canal once touted by President Lee Myung-Bak, a former construction CEO nicknamed the "Bulldozer". The canal project was officially scrapped because of widespread objections….

The Yeongsan River at sunset, shot by Byungjoon Kim, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Global warming won't affect all deltas

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:27:00 +0000

Richard Lovett in Nature News: Whether river deltas become swamped by rising sea levels will depend on a multitude of factors, including the type of soil and the tectonic action of any nearby plates, say researchers. "In coastal systems we have to think about combined impacts," said oceanographer Richard Feely of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, at this year's meeting of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation in Portland, Oregon on 3 November. Every system is different, he says.

In the Mississippi Delta, for example, not only is the sea level rising, but the soils are subsiding, causing the land to submerge more rapidly than the river can deliver new sediment. "It's quite clear that if we try to focus on conserving the outer areas, it's going to be almost impossible" to save the delta, says Carles Ibáñez Martí, director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology's Aquatic Ecosystems unit in Sant Carles de la Ràpita in Spain.

…A very different combination of factors threatens California's Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, east of San Francisco. There, the region's natural wetlands were long ago drained and dyked to create intensively farmed islands. Unfortunately, the soils consist mostly of peat, which has slowly oxidized — releasing carbon dioxide — or blown away so the islands are now as much as 8 metres below sea level.

…One delta that seems set to survive is the Danube Delta in the Black Sea. Because it is in a region of tectonic uplift creating central Europe's Carpathian Mountains, says Liviu Giosan, a sedimentologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the sea level has remained stable for several thousand years. Furthermore, he says, even though upstream dams have cut down its supply, the delta seems to be receiving enough sediment to remain stable.

Somewhere in the middle of the Danube delta, shot by T. Lessiak, Wikimedia Commons

Climate models don't tell the full story

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:21:00 +0000

Science Daily: Climate models that predict heavy rainfall don't give the whole picture, according to the results of a study by NWO scientist Martin Ziegler. He examined climate changes that have taken place over the past 800,000 years, and discovered that the melting icebergs in the North Atlantic and changes in the El Niño Southern Oscillation have a great influence on the intensity of monsoon rains.

Ziegler analysed sedimentary deposits from around the world in order to work out which factors affect the strength of monsoons. The sedimentary deposits give a picture of the weather patterns of the last 800,000 years. Many climate models are based on gradual changes, for example the concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere, or changes in the solar radiation that enters the atmosphere. According to Ziegler, this means that important factors may be overlooked.

Ziegler demonstrated that it's not just the solar radiation that has a great influence, but also the melting of great expanses of ice as a consequence of the way that the earth wobbles on its axis. Changes in the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which is essentially a periodic temperature fluctuation in the water of the eastern Pacific, were shown to have a great influence on the intensity of the monsoon. Many current climate models take into account the long-term effects of the periodic fluctuations in the position of the earth's axis, but look only at the changes in the distribution of solar radiation that reaches earth over a one- year period.

The monsoon rains affect large areas of Asia and Africa each year. During some periods there is much more or less rain than usual, which can often lead to floods. The strength of the monsoon can therefore have serious consequences….

Photos from Embassy Golf Links Business Park which is off intermediate(/inner) ring road in Bangalore, shot by Thejas, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

Megacities must tie clean air goals to carbon cuts, say experts

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:57:00 +0000

SciDev.net: Residents of the world's largest cities are ideally positioned to achieve the twin goals of clean air and lower carbon emissions, according to scientists in China and the US. The sheer density of populations in the world's 19 megacities — cities containing 10 million people or more — means the financial resources are available to tackle the combined problem of air pollution and climate change, say environment scientist Zhu Tong from Peking University and David Parrish from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US in an article published in Science last month (30 October).

Making public transport and buildings more energy efficient is key to cleaning the air and lowering overall energy consumption, argue the article's authors. "If proper measures are taken, we can not only reclaim clean air in megacities, but also reduce carbon dioxide emissions," Zhu told SciDev.Net.

He added: "More advanced technologies and a better chance of generating wealth and managing energy enable megacities to reduce air pollution and control climate change in a more efficient way." Residents of megacities are exposed to airborne particles and ozone that are known to cause severe health problems, including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

All of today's megacities fall below the WHO standard for particulate matter, and the problem of pollution mushrooms as cities grow. Half of humanity now lives in cities and the number of megacities is expected to reach 27 by 2025….

A favela in Rio de Janeiro

Report: Extreme weather will be seen on Yangtze

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:50:00 +0000

Tini Tran in the Associated Press: Increased droughts, floods and storms will hit China's Yangtze River Basin over the next few decades, the result of rising temperatures globally, according to a report released Tuesday. Climate change will trigger extreme weather conditions along the country's longest river, but strategies can be taken to control it, said the report, issued by the environmental group WWF-China. The group was originally known as the World Wildlife Fund.

In the past two decades, the temperature in the river basin area has risen steadily, which has led to a spike in flooding, heat waves and droughts, the report said. It is the largest assessment yet on the impact of global warming on the Yangtze basin area, which is home to 400 million people. Data collected from 147 monitoring stations along the 700,000-square-mile (1.8 million-square-kilometer) area showed temperatures rose by 0.59 degree Fahrenheit (0.33 degree Celsius) during the 1990s. Additional findings show that between 2001 and 2005, the basin's temperature rose on average another 1.28 degrees Fahrenheit (0.71 degree Celsius).

"Extreme climate events such as storms and drought disasters will increase as climate change continues to alter our planet," said Xu Ming, the lead researcher on the report, which included expert contributions from the China Academy of Sciences, the China Meteorological Administration and other academic institutions.

The report identifies key areas that will be affected: from agriculture to various ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, wetlands and coastal regions. Crops such as corn, winter wheat and rice will see clear declines in production, with rice crops alone dropping between 9 percent to 41 percent by the end of the century, it said. Natural habitat such as grasslands and wetlands have receded steadily in recent years while rising sea levels triggered by global warming will make coastal cities such as Shanghai more vulnerable….

Sunset on the Yangtze, shot by Ryu, Cheol, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Climate studies to benefit from 12 years of satellite aerosol data

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:42:00 +0000

European Space Agency: Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change. They are one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate change models. ESA's GlobAerosol project has been making the most of European satellite capabilities to monitor them.

Using data from the Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2 on the ERS-2 satellite, the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer and the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Envisat and the Spinning Enhanced Visible & InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation, GlobAerosol has produced a global aerosol dataset going back to 1995. The full dataset is available on the GlobAerosol website.

Some aerosols occur naturally, originating from sea-spray, wind-blown dust, volcanic eruptions and biochemical emissions from oceans and forests, while others are produced through emissions from industrial pollution, fossil-fuel burning, man-made forest fires and agriculture.

They are important because they strongly affect Earth’s energy balance in two ways: they scatter and absorb sunlight and infrared emission from Earth's surface, and act as condensation nuclei for the formation of cloud droplets. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these effects tend to cool the planet to almost the same degree as carbon dioxide emissions warm it. These estimates are uncertain, however, so more data are needed.

Satellite data can provide essential information on the global distribution of aerosols to help understand the impact of these processes for the purposes of predicting weather and climate as well as for monitoring the transport of industrial pollution…..

Desert dust blown from the Western Sahara towards the Canary Islands, seen in this 300-m resolution Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) image. The wind can move between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust up from the Sahara each year. Photo by ESA

Pesticide levels lower in corn belt rivers

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:33:00 +0000

Environment News Service: Concentrations of 11 major pesticides declined or stayed the same in Corn Belt rivers and streams from 1996 to 2006, finds a new U.S. Geological Survey study released today. Scientists studied 11 herbicides and insecticides frequently detected in the Corn Belt region, which stretches across Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio, as well as parts of adjoining states.

This area has the highest pesticide use in the nation, mostly herbicides used for weed control in corn and soybeans. Borne by runoff from cropland and urban areas, these pesticides are widespread in the region’s streams and rivers. Elevated concentrations of these chemicals can affect aquatic organisms in streams as well as the quality of drinking water in some high-use areas where surface water is used for municipal supply.

The USGS study is based on analysis of 11 pesticides for 31 stream sites in the Corn Belt for two partially overlapping time periods - 1996 to 2002 and 2000 to 2006. Pesticides included in the trend analyses were the herbicides atrazine, acetochlor, metolachlor, alachlor, cyanazine, EPTC, simazine, metribuzin and prometon, and the insecticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon.

…The declines documented in pesticide concentrations closely followed declines in their annual applications, the authors said, indicating that reducing pesticide use is an effective and reliable strategy for reducing pesticide contamination in streams….

A crop duster spraying pesticides

Scientists call for urgent 'global cooling' to save coral reefs

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:37:00 +0000

University of Queensland: Australian marine scientists have issued an urgent call for massive and rapid worldwide cuts in carbon emissions, deep enough to prevent atmospheric CO2 levels rising to 450 parts per million (ppm). In the lead up to United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference Professors Charlie Veron (former Chief Scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science) and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland, have urged the world's leaders to adopt a maximum global emission target of 325 parts per million (ppm).

This will be essential, they say, to save coral reefs worldwide from a catastrophic decline which threatens the livelihoods of an estimated 500 million people globally. This is substantially lower than today's atmospheric levels of 387 ppm, and far below the 450ppm limit envisaged by most governments attending Copenhagen as necessary to restrain global warming to a 2 degree rise, on average.

“This may take a long time. However, climate change is an intergenerational issue which will require intergenerational thinking,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“If CO2 levels are allowed to continue to approach 450 ppm (due by 2030–2040 at the current rates at which emissions are climbing), reefs will be in rapid and terminal decline world-wide from mass coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and other environmental impacts associated with climate change,” Professor Charlie Veron, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, Dr Janice Lough of COECRS and the Australian Institute of Marine Science and colleagues warn in a new scientific paper published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. “Damage to shallow reef communities will become extensive with consequent reduction of biodiversity followed by extinctions,” they said...

Illustration of coral from the Vienna Dioscurides, from: Pedanius Dioscorides – Der Wiener Dioskurides, Codex medicus Graecus 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek Graz (in Austria): Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt 1998 fol. 391 verso (Band 2), Kommentar S. 52. ISBN 3-201-01725-6

Hurricane Ida heads toward Gulf of Mexico, floods kill 91 in El Salvador

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:25:00 +0000

Voice of America: A strengthened Hurricane Ida is making its way toward the Gulf of Mexico, while the death toll from floods in El Salvador has risen to 91. In its latest weather advisory Sunday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said hurricane conditions were possible in the next day or two for parts of the northern U.S. Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

The governor of Louisiana (Bobby Jindal) has declared a state of emergency in preparation for the storm, allowing state resources to be used in case of an emergency. Earlier in the day, the Category 2 hurricane battered the Mexican resort town of Cancun and parts of the Yucatan Peninsula, which remains under a hurricane warning.

The government of El Salvador said three days of heavy rain triggered flooding and mudslides across the country that have left at least 60 people missing and thousands more in shelters. Authorities in El Salvador blamed remnants of Hurricane Ida for some of the devastation, although forecasters hesitated to make a direct link….

Hurricane Ida's path, plotted by Cyclonebiskit using data from NASA and the National Hurricane Center

New Zealand's methane effect worse than thought

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:12:00 +0000

New Zealand Herald: New Zealand may be making a bigger contribution to global warming than scientists thought. A Nasa study says climate scientists have underestimated by 20 to 40 per cent how much methane warms the planet - even though it is already believed to be 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The study, led by Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said methane blocked the creation of aerosols that would otherwise cool the planet - a new finding not counted in current estimates of global warming. New Zealand is almost unique in the developed world because of its large proportion of methane emissions. The gas is released by farm animals, as well as landfills, crops and coal mines.

New Zealand scientists reacted cautiously to the new study, saying more work was needed to back it up. A New Zealand author of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Martin Manning, said at least one more study showing the same thing would be needed before the panel would change its stance. It was a "very short paper on a very complex topic" but it would open up debate, he said.

Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium manager Mark Aspin said New Zealand would be looking to the IPCC for guidance, "given our [emissions] profile it is something we want to keep an eye on". The study found methane and another pollutant, carbon monoxide, soaked up an atmospheric "scrubber" called hydroxyl that would otherwise join other substances to make cooling aerosols. The sulphate aerosols elbowed aside by methane cooled the earth by scattering light and affecting the clouds….

Lake Marian in Fiordland National Park near the Homer Tunnel on the road to Milford Sound, New Zealand, shot by Thorney¿?, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

UN examines disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation link

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:34:00 +0000

UN News Centre: A United Nations-backed gathering of experts kicked off today in Panama to initiate for the first time an assessment of the effect climate change has on the future threat of natural disasters and how nations can better manage an expected rise in severe weather patterns. The first global scientific effort examining the linkages between disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change will be undertaken by over 90 experts attending the four-day meeting in Panama City, which was convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The call for the investigation – consisting of an extensive survey of scientific and technical data available in 2010 – comes in response to a IPCC report in 2007 which predicts that more frequent and severe extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, storms, heat waves were likely in the future warmer world.

“The IPCC Special Report is a collective effort that will shine a spotlight on the working policies and tools that people have been using for years to manage and adapt to natural variations of the climate,” said Margareta Wahlström, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction. “It will inform governments about what works best to reduce disaster risks and manage extreme events, and how to cut down on future losses of lives and assets,” added Ms. Wahlström.

The assessment, Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, will be delivered in a report, slated for release in 2011 following worldwide technical and governmental review. The experts will assess measures that governments and people can take to build resilience to weather and climate hazards and examine practices, strategies and approaches that communities can use to adapt to climate change….

The dam in Campilhas, near Alentejo Portugal's southwest. The scale measures the elevation, in meters, above mean sea level, and the water is low because of the drought in 2005, when this picture was taken by Joaquim Alves Gaspar, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Flood victims suffer as insurance costs rise

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:11:00 +0000

Jamie Elliott in the Guardian (UK): Flood victims continue to face spiralling costs for home insurance as excesses for flood cover rise to levels that are making their properties virtually impossible to sell. Many have invested thousands to protect their homes from flooding, but these efforts are rarely rewarded by insurers.

"People are coming to us with huge premiums and flood excesses of up to £30,000, which is as good as having no insurance at all and makes their property virtually worthless," says Mary Dhonau, chief executive of the National Flood Forum, a charity that advises flood victims. "The problem has got steadily worse over the past year and we are now being overwhelmed by calls from homeowners who have spent a huge amount protecting their property, but are still being charged ridiculous premiums or refused cover altogether."

Chris Wreghitt's Axa home insurance premium leapt to more than three times what it had been when his Worcestershire property was flooded in 2007. "Prior to the flood, I was paying just under £1,000 a year, and when I came to renew in 2008 they put the premium up to £1,638," he says. "But this year they wanted to increase it to £3,747."…

Cropped image from the title Page of an 1884 reprint of A true report of certaine wonderfull ouerflowings of Waters, now lately in Summerset-shire, Norfolke and other places of England..., originally printed in London 1607

Floods, mudslides kill 91 in El Salvador as Ida rages on

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: A late-season hurricane ravaged parts of Central America Sunday as floods and landslides killed at least 91 in El Salvador and thousands were left homeless in Nicaragua. Hurricane Ida, which grew to a category two storm Sunday, was moving into the southern Gulf of Mexico but local officials said it had caused no casualties or damage to infrastructure in the popular tourist resort city of Cancun.

Forecasters at the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said Ida had strengthened packing top wind speeds of 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour as it moved over Mexico's Caribbean coast. The tail-end of Ida coupled with a low pressure system in the Pacific caused heavy flooding in El Salvador that left 91 people dead and left some 60 others missing, civil defense officials said.

"We have to mourn the deaths of 91 people because of the rains," Interior Minister Humberto Centeno told reporters here….

Hurricane Ida hitting Nicaragua November 5, 2009, shot by NASA

Past climate of northern Antarctic Peninsula informs global warming debate

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:49:00 +0000

Science Daily: The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented.

"At no time during the last 14 thousand years was there a period of climate warming and loss of ice as large and regionally synchronous as that we are now witnessing in the Antarctic Peninsula," says team member Dr Steve Bohaty of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), home of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES)."

The findings are based on a detailed analysis of the thickest Holocene sediment core yet drilled in the Antarctic Peninsula. "By studying the climate history of the past and identifying causes of these changes, we are better placed to evaluate current climate change and its impacts in the Antarctic," says Dr Bohaty.

…They conclude that ice was grounded in the fjord during the Last Glacial Maximum -- the height of the last ice age -- and eroded older sediments from the fjord. Later, the grounded ice retreated, leaving a permanent floating ice canopy.

The evidence points to a period of rapid glacial retreat from 10.1 to 8.2 thousand years ago, followed by a period of reduced sea-ice cover and warm water conditions occurring between 8.2 and 5.9 thousand years ago. An important finding of the study is that the mid-Holocene warming interval does not appear to have occurred synchronously throughout the region, and its timing and duration was most likely influenced at different sites by local oceanographic controls, as well as physical geography.

Following the mid-Holocene warming interval, the climate gradually cooled over the next three thousand years or so, resulting in more extensive sea-ice cover in the bay. But the researchers find no evidence that the ice advanced in Maxwell Bay during the so-called Little Ice Age in the sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century.

The Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed 3°C in the past five decades, with increased rainfall and a widespread retreat of glaciers. "Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes," say the researchers….

The icebreaker Polar Star somewhere on the Antarctic Peninsula. Shot by Ville Miettinen from Helsinki, Finland, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Six African Countries funded to ease climate adaptation

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:40:00 +0000

Environment News Service: A total of $1.1 billion in new financing will flow to six African countries to assist them in developing renewable energy and preparing for the consequences of climate change. From solar water heaters to wind energy to development policy planning, a range of new, scalable investments were given the green light October 27 at Trustee meetings of the Climate Investment Funds in Washington. Agreed in 2008, donor countries have pledged over US$6 billion to the Climate Investment Funds.

Mozambique, Niger and Zambia will each receive up to $50-70 million in additional funding to help transform their economies through climate resilience. Morocco and South Africa will join Egypt in receiving very low-interest loans for $150 million, $500 million, and $300 million respectively, to strengthen their investments in clean energy in support of national priorities for low carbon development.

"Climate Investment Funds' support for Africa is coming at a critical time. Climate change has the potential to turn back the clock on hard won development gains across the continent," said Katherine Sierra, vice president of sustainable development at the World Bank.

"CIF financing is teaching us how to work together with governments, civil society and the private sector to make truly transformational investments a reality. Each CIF dollar so far is leveraging an additional 10 dollars in private and public investments," Sierra said….

Planting trees can shift water flow

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:26:00 +0000

Ana Belluscio in Nature News: Planting trees, which can significantly help to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, nevertheless comes with potentially damaging side effects. According to two new studies, planting forests in areas that currently don't have trees — a process called afforestation — can reduce the local availability of water.

One key measure of water flow is 'base flow', the proportion of a stream or river not attributable to direct run-off from precipitation or melting snow. Base flow is often seen as the minimum supply of water on which people can safely rely. But in basins that contain small rivers, afforestation can reduce base flow by up to 50%, says Esteban Jobbágy, an ecologist at Argentina's national scientific council (CONICET) and the National University of San Luis.

Less base flow means less water for local populations. "It's a concern especially in drier regions, where the differences in base flow may be more noticeable," says Dan Binkley, a forest ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who was not involved in the research.

Jobbágy's team conducted a two-year study on seven paired basins — seven with native grasslands and seven that had been planted with forests — in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. With their deep roots and tall canopies, trees absorb and transpire more water than do grasses, resulting in drier streams. According to Jobbágy, reductions in base flow are less pronounced in sloping or rocky basins, as water can escape from the tree roots and travel through the rocks….

Beech and oak trees at Appley Park, Ryde, Isle of Wight, shot by Naturenet, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Japan pledges over 500 billion yen in aid to Mekong states over 3 years

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Thomas) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:41:00 +0000

MCOT English News (from Thai News Agency): Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Friday that Japan will provide over 500 billion yen in official development assistance to five Mekong countries in Southeast Asia over the next three years. Hatoyama made the commitment at the first summit meeting involving the leaders of Japan and the five Mekong-region countries -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam -- that began in Tokyo the same day, a Japanese official said.

The two-day meeting through Saturday commenced against the backdrop of Japan's continuing aid efforts in the Mekong River region amid China's growing presence there. During the day's meeting, Hatoyama pledged to boost Japan's support for the Mekong countries to help the region's stability and development.

''The new government of Japan intends to proactively contribute more than ever to stability and development in the Mekong region through our strengthened assistance,'' Hatoyama said in his opening remarks. ''Japan will steadily play its role as a bridge for common prosperity in the future.'' Stability and development, he said, would help to narrow disparities within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to which the Mekong countries belong, and promote the regional bloc's integration.

''In that sense,'' the Japanese prime minister said, the Mekong countries form ''an important region that holds the key to realizing my vision of an East Asian community.'' The leaders of the Mekong countries thanked Japan for its commitment to the region's development, saying that greater cooperation between the countries would contribute to the successful establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community, which is planned to be set up by 2015….

Sunset on the Mekong River in Laos, shot by Gorgo, Wikimedia Commons